Tony Khan Defends AEW's Championship Count On Grounds That More TV Needs More Stakes
Tony Khan has reasoned why AEW needed to add more titles, pointing to the company's growth as a major factor.
Khan recently announced the addition of another title, the National Championship, a decision that's been criticized by the likes of Bully Ray and Nic Nemeth. In the AEW Full Gear media call, Khan explained why it was necessary for him to make that decision.
"I think it's important to look at the content that any wrestling promotion is producing and what the model for the business of that company is. For AEW, the revenue is primarily driven from TV and pay-per-view, and we produce many hours of TV and pay-per-view. We also produce a lot of live events, and we produce over a hundred shows per year and several hours per week. This is different than the beginning of AEW because at the beginning of AEW, we only had two hours of television, and I had no association whatsoever with Ring of Honor and certainly was not the owner and promoter of that company," he said.
Khan argued that he hasn't added more titles to ROH, barring the two women's titles – Women's World Television Championship and Women's Pure Championship, which he has done to grow the women's division of the brand. While discussing AEW, he said that the company has grown and changed since it began, noting that AEW now produces far more content, which he said made adding more titles necessary.
"With ROH, I did inherit their championships and have expanded the women's championships in ROH," Khan stated. "In AEW, the company has changed and we've added Collision, which is a hugely important part of the AEW weekly TV, and the lifeblood of the company is the AEW Warner Brothers partnership of which Collision is a huge part, and we're a company now that produces twice as many hours of TV and twice as many pay-per-views as we did when we started. "
He pointed to AEW being incredibly successful now and how the promotion's TV rights are currently far higher than what it was even last year.